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by Jeff Rowe - Contributing EditorEach MCAD Weekly Review delivers to its readers news concerning the latest developments in the MCAD industry, MCAD product and company news, featured downloads, customer wins, and coming events, along with a selection of other articles that we feel you might find interesting. Brought to you by MCADCafe.com. If we miss a story or subject that you feel deserves to be included, or you just want to suggest a future topic, please contact us! Questions? Feedback? Click here. Thank you!

With the Version 6 (V6) collaborative platform, customers across industries are creating smart products to run lifelike experiences. These smart products rely on electronics, electrical or fluidic systems to provide ever more advanced functions. In this context, the goal of the Elsys acquisition is to provide a unique solution allowing Dassault Systèmes customers to associate schematic documents to the real product’s behavior. In addition, all associated schematics related to the design, manufacturing and services of electrical systems will be generated automatically from the functional-logical description. Eventually, thanks to the unique V6 convergence platform, Dassault Systèmes

will be able to provide revolutionary multi-disciplinary integrated solutions, from electrical to fluidics to electronics.

Dominique Florack, Senior Executive Vice President, Products, R&D, Dassault Systèmes added: “Over the last 20 years, customers have been longing for Generative Schematic Technology. Although promised many times by many companies, it has never been delivered widely to the market. Furthermore, the need to provide a unique convergence platform for product related documents and 3D is growing as products become more intelligent. I am delighted that Elsys decided to join Dassault Systèmes to help us meet these challenges. We are further demonstrating our commitment to deliver, as part of V6, a game changer multi-disciplinary system engineering optimization and execution solution to meet

the need for speed and zero errors.”

“With hundreds of kilometers of wires, electrical systems in modern aircrafts are highly complex and having an integrated solution that brings together our existing electrical applications on a single platform is a must,” said Didier Gondoin, Executive Vice President, Research, Design & Engineering, Dassault Aviation. “We are long-time users of Elsys’ innovative applications, including ELECTRE for electrical schematics, and Elsys has a deep understanding of our electrical processes. We believe that this acquisition will successfully deliver next-generation electrical process integration to Dassault Aviation as a critical feature of our current Version 6 implementation.”

“We are convinced that combining the extensive industry experience, knowledge, and proven solutions of the Elsys team with CATIA state-of-the-art Virtual Product Portfolio is the only way to address current and future industry challenges, among them, to deliver zero default systems,” said Jacques Goldstein, Managing Partner R&D, Elsys.

Commentary By Jeffrey Rowe, Editor

I think this acquisition will prove to be one of the better ones in recent memory for Dassault especially in the automotive and aerospace markets where it is already deeply entrenched. There is also a strong connection between Elsys technologies and some of Dassault’s, including CATIA and ENOVIA.

ELSYS has been selected by major international companies in aerospace, automotive and shipbuilding industries as their preferred solution to provide electrical engineering needs.

From its inception, ELSYS has provided software and services to industries developing products combining mechanical and electrical technologies that require specialized electrical diagram, bundle and harness design, and wiring applications – many complementary to Dassault. The product portfolio includes:

Electrical schematics (ELECTRE)

3D electromechanical integration (CATELECTRE)

Collaborative platform with ENOVIA SmartTeam (SMARTELECTRE)

ELECTRE is the core of ELSYS’s PLM suite of electrical engineering solutions. It is developed foe industry sectors that design products combining mechanical and electrical technologies and require special applications for electrical schematics, bundle and harness design, and wiring.

Physical Wire Harness Board

From the schematics to the complete harness production file, ELECTRE offers a broad range of applications that cover the entire electrical design process in its mechanical environment and automatically generate manufacturing and wiring documents.

Digital Wire Harness Board

Combined with the CATIA V5 electrical engineering modules, ELECTRE handles the collaborative work between electrical and mechanical engineers, and provides a productive technology set for the requirements of onboard electrical systems (automotive, aeronautics, etc.) and other systems (machines, equipment, etc). In all cases, ELECTRE solutions provide integration with existing CAD/CAM configurations, and preserve a company’s data through a data recovery capability.

ELSYS also develops multi PDM solutions to perform integration of ELECTRE data into a company’s PDM system to provide a collaborative environment in which to manage and couple the electrical with the mechanical design models and the production data with the manufacturing documents.

This comprehensive approach to electrical issues allows companies to design and manufacture high-quality harnesses and cables.

CATELECTRE integrates ELECTRE and CATIA’s 3D electrical solutions in a single digital mock-up that combines the electrical and mechanical models. This comprehensive, two-way integration makes it possible to synchronize electrical schematics with the 3D mechanical environment supporting them and to update harness data using information from the 3D models. It also enriches the CATIA representation with functional information from ELECTRE, such as electrical engineering routing constraints.

CATELECTRE, the integration gateway between an electrical design tool (ELECTRE) and a mechanical design tool (CATIA), is a tool for building a comprehensive electromechanical model combining the 2D functional model (pilot) with the 3D mechanical environment (constraints). CATELECTRE’s design methodology follows and naturally enhances a company’s processes for designing harnesses and integrating them in their mechanical environment.

CATELECTRE also combines with Elsys’s multi PDM platforms to provide a coherent collaborative environment in which to manage electrical data, models and documents.

SMARTELECTRE, a collaborative platform integrating ELECTRE and ENOVIA SmarTeam, is the tool developed by ELSYS to implement a PLM solution, specially tailored to electromechanical products and electrical engineering wiring. Implementing a PLM solution enables companies to manage, share and exchange their product information in their own design departments and with subcontractors, suppliers and partners.

SMARTELECTRE handles the integration of electrical data in a company’s PDM system and ensures the quality and efficacy needed to reach the technical and economic goals set for products. By taking these goals into account, SMARTELECTRE enables companies to improve their vital processes –quality, costs and lead times– and adds its knowledgeware to the collaborative management of technical data by ENOVIA SmarTeam.

As I said at the beginning, I think this acquisition will benefit both parties involved, as well as the automotive and aerospace industries that they serve.

The Week’s Top 5

At MCADCafé we track many things, including the stories that have attracted the most interest from our subscribers. Below are the five news items that were the most viewed during last week.

MSC Software Announces New Release of Adams

MSC Software Corp. announced Adams 2012. This release of Adams delivers an all-new user interface and new model browser that simplifies model setup; new automatic flexible body generation to support efficient, high-fidelity system modeling; and an innovative tire model to complement the improved selection of standard events and road profile formats available for vehicle simulations. The release will be available at the end of November.

All-new User Interface - The Adams 2012 user interface provides a new ribbon-style format and intuitive layout that offers improved labels, making model construction easier and more user-friendly. The main toolbox and build menu functions are in a series of tabs for model entity construction, simulation, and post-processing actions, and icon strips are located on the main menu bar and status toolbar.

Automatic Flexible Body Generation - The Adams 2012 release introduces a new Adams/ViewFlex module that enables users to create flexible bodies without leaving the Adams environment and without the dependence on external FEM) or FEA software. The feature is powered by embedded MSC Nastran technology and run wholly in the background of the Adams session. This improves productivity and facilitates high-fidelity modeling.

Enhanced Solver for Speed - The improved C++ solver in Adams 2012 is now the default solver for all Adams products, including Adams/View and Adams/Car. The Adams C++ solver provides modeling and simulation capabilities not found in the FORTRAN solver, such as Nonlinear BEAM and FIELD formulations, flexible body contact, clearance measures, an exact linearization algorithm, a bisection method in the Adams/Controls system import option, support for delay differential equations, and parallel processing.